Between Hope and Uncertainty: The Peace Process in Sudan
In January 2005, the Sudanese government and the southern opposition Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). However, violence continues to affect people's lives and women's demands are dismissed out of hand. It is in this context that the Gender Center for Research and Training pursues its struggle for human rights, gender equality and socio-economic change in Sudan. Asha El-Karib, director of the Gender Center, recently visited Inter Pares and explained how the CPA was affecting her work in Sudan.
Has the CPA created new opportunities for civil society in Sudan?
The current CPA is restructuring the whole country, which could create openings for civil society. Yet, for now, we question why it is called a comprehensive peace agreement, since only the government of Sudan and the SPLM are officially part of the process. Unless a more holistic approach, looking at the country in its totality and all its inhabitants, women and men, is adopted, conflicts will erupt in other parts of Sudan and we will be even further away from comprehensive peace.
Nevertheless, the Gender Center, in collaboration with women from civil society and from various political parties, has been part of an initiative to draft an alternative "engendered" national constitution. Together, we have agreed that we do not want Islamic Sharia law to be included in the national constitution: we are struggling for a secular constitution. The opportunity exists, and we try to challenge the authorities on their own terms, by using the CPA protocols themselves to defend women's rights.
The whole issue of building a culture of peace in Sudan is of great concern to us. There must be investment in the people of Sudan to become responsible citizens through a democratization process and through the promotion of a culture of peace.
A critique of the CPA is that there are no rehabilitation or reconciliation mechanisms to support communities' healing process.
This is a very legitimate critique. The CPA focuses on the material and ignores human needs in a broader sense. For instance, it does not address how gender roles changed during the war for internally displaced people and refugees in camps. The government's definition of reconciliation is to turn a new page and simply forget all the horrors of war. But people still remember what happened. There is an urgent need for building trust.
What kind of strategies do you promote to illustrate the value of women participating in the peace process?
First, simply using a quantitative approach, we can easily demonstrate that women are 50% of the population and they have different needs. Women's participation ensures that important gender-related issues are raised. Second, by using a rights-based approach, we work with women themselves so that their voices become stronger and louder. We facilitate greater awareness of their rights and the need to uphold them. Within this approach, we have targeted political parties, among others, because unless women become part of policy and decision-making processes, structural inequalities will remain. Women's political participation is a strategic issue for us because it "engenders" democracy during the peace process itself.
How has the situation in Darfur, and the international attention it has received, affected your own work?
International NGOs are quite present and active in the region, and though they criticize the problem of violence against women, they do not address it. For example, even if they provide humanitarian food aid to people, women still have to go outside the camps to get fuel, which puts them at risk.
For the first time in Sudan, we hear women, especially Darfurian women, speaking out and denouncing the political violence they confront. In Darfur, the Gender Center has been facilitating fora specifically addressing the issue of violence against women. The medical community, the police, the judiciary and the media have been involved in the process to look at the various dimensions of the problem. We hope to be able to use the case of Darfur to tackle the whole problem of violence against women in Sudan, which also clearly demonstrates that the issue of peace in Sudan is not merely one of division between northern and southern Sudan.
In May 2005, Asha El-Karib made a presentation to the Canadian Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs about the prospects for ending the conflict in Sudan. The full transcript of Asha's presentation is available on the Inter Pares Web site under "Publications."
Action Alert: CPP and Human Rights
Do you know how your Canada Pension Plan Premiums are invested?
Most Canadians are familiar with the Canada Pension Plan through their regular payroll deductions. The Canada Pension Plan (CPP), instituted in 1966, was an important social policy initiative to deal with the income security of post-retirement Canadians.
What few Canadians realize is that the federal government, through an Act of Parliament in 1997, created the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), an independent crown corporation. The CPPIB invests pension funds by buying publicly traded shares (equities) of Canadian and foreign companies. The stated aim is to earn sufficient returns for the fund so that it can continue to pay the pensions of Canadians. Today it is one of the largest investment funds in the country with assets of more than $70 billion.
The result is that the pension funds of Canadians are being invested in ways that are contrary to the public interest (e.g. tobacco) and in some cases contributing to conflict and human rights abuses in other countries.
One of the most notorious examples of CPP investments was militarized commerce is the case of the Canadian oil company, Talisman, and its activities in southern Sudan. The role of Talisman in contributing to the war in Sudan was documented in a number of investigations. All of these investigations concluded that the company had contributed to a war in which millions of people were displaced or killed. Despite vocal public campaigns calling for disinvestment, the CPPIB along with the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund continued to hold investments in Talisman.
Other examples of CPPIB involvement in militarized commerce are its investments in Canadian, American and French companies operating in Burma. The Canadian government, along with the United States and the European Union, acknowledges that the military junta in Burma is one of the most ruthless dictatorships in the world. Indeed, the Canadian government officially discourages private sector investment in Burma out of concern that foreign investment strengthens the military junta's grip on power.
Canadian pension funds, however, have been invested in both Unocal (USA) and Total (France), companies involved in the construction of a gas pipeline from Burma to Thailand. The pipeline was accompanied by the forced relocation of villages, forced labour, rape and summary executions committed by Burmese troops providing security to the project. Recently, Unocal settled out of court in a legal case brought against it in the US by a group of Burmese villagers seeking damages for the abuses they suffered.
CPPIB is also an investor in the Canadian company Ivanhoe which operates the largest mining complex in Burma on a 50-50 profit-sharing deal with the junta. Despite the Canadian government's official disapproval, a Canadian crown corporation is investing public funds in a mining enterprise that is contributing profits to the military regime, thereby strengthening the junta's capacity for violence and repression.
There have been many attempts to challenge the CPPIB's refusal to use socially responsible investment criteria in decision-making. The Board defends itself by saying that the fund is so large, and the mandate to earn returns on investment so restrictive, that it cannot consider non-investment criteria. The outgoing president and CEO of the CPPIB recently defended the Board against a resolution from the Canadian Medical Association calling for CPP disinvestment in the tobacco industry. The mandate of the CPPIB, he said, is to earn returns on investments; moreover, the Board does not want to deal with the demands of "well-intentioned interest groups."
This position is indefensible given that some CPPIB investments have underwritten serious violations of human rights. Such investments are certainly contrary to the values held by most Canadians, and are likely contrary to the exercise of fiduciary responsibility by the CPPIB. Moreover, there is growing evidence that socially responsible investments can earn better returns relative to investments where social factors are not considered. Socially responsible investing is increasingly being practiced by the private sector as well as by government pension funds in Europe and in Quebec.
Canadians have a right, as well as a responsibility, to ensure that their contributions to the Canada Pension Fund are not utilized in situations that aid or abet the maiming or killing or people, either at home or internationally. Otherwise we are complicit in these crimes.
CPP Investments in Armaments
According to research undertaken by the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT), CPPIB has invested billions in military corporations. Among others, CPP funds are supporting the development of surface-to-air missiles, land missiles, cruise missiles, cluster bombs, stealth missiles, and bunker busting bombs.
Source: http://coat.openconcept.ca/cpp/
QPP & Socially Responsible Investment
Last year, 3.6 million Quebecers contributed more than $8 billion to the Regime de rentes du Quebec (RRQ or Quebec Pension Plan). The RRQ is managed by the Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (the Caisse), one of the single largest investment bodies in North America. Earlier this year, the Caisse announced its new Policy on Socially Responsible Investment, which is viewed by some ethical fund analysts as one of the most progressive social investment policies in Canada.
According to one analyst, concerns voiced by individuals and citizen's groups forced the Caisse to reflect on its investment policies. The outcome has been the publication of a social investment policy that has far higher ethical requirements than the Canadian Pension Plan. The Policy adheres to the principles of the International Labour Organization and commits the Caisse to train its managers in integrating social, ethical and environmental criteria when choosing where to invest. It states that the Caisse could disinvest if the dialogue with companies should "become unproductive and should the company's social behaviour prove unsatisfactory."
It is up to the depositors (that is, all who contribute to the QPP) to stay vigilant and ensure the Caisse puts this progressive policy into practice.
For more information: http://www.cdpcapital.com/media/Politique_ISR_ang.pdf
What You Can Do
- Write or email your Member of Parliament and ask why CPP is investing in situations of militarized commerce. MP emails can be found at
www.parl.gc.ca. - Write the Minister responsible for the CPP program. The Hon. Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance ( jflaherty@fin.gc.ca).
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Inter Pares works overseas and in Canada in support of self-help development groups, and in the promotion of understanding about the causes, effects and solutions to under-development and poverty.
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